


A Study in Tweet: Social Media and the “Sherlock” Conundrum

by TheNavelTreatment



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Analysis, Gen, Meta, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 20:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNavelTreatment/pseuds/TheNavelTreatment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How social media both helps and hurts Sherlock's global popularity</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Tweet: Social Media and the “Sherlock” Conundrum

 

Checking my Instagram on New Year’s Day was like playing minesweeper. “No….skip…not safe…not safe…OMG IS THAT A DEERSTALKER?!! Because I live in the Good ‘Ole U S of A, not Great Britain, the Season 3 premiere of “Sherlock” did not conveniently pop up on my TV screen at 9pm. It’s not scheduled for American debut until the19th, but by then, inevitably, all the fun will be gone.

 Differing release dates in different countries are nothing new. When it comes to the movies, it’s a given: Catching Fire had a release window that spanned from Nov. 20th to Dec. 6th. This inevitably leads to piracy; anyone who has a cousin with a “friend” or who has taken a stroll down Canal Street knows that business is good.  While pirates inevitably cut into the profits of many big budget films, they rarely do catastrophic damage; The Hobbit is both the most pirated movie of 2013 and the number one movie at the box office. ([TorrentFreak](http://torrentfreak.com/the-hobbit-most-pirated-film-of-2013-131231/)).  But while movies can survive a little file sharing, more and more “event” television shows cannot.

 A perfect example is the BBC’s “Sherlock”, which debuted in 2010 and quickly became a phenomenon. At three hour-and-a-half long episodes a season, this update to Arthur Conan Doyle’s super sleuth is extraordinarily conducive to binge watching.  According to a survey conducted by Lynette Porter for [Popwatch](http://archiveofourown.org/works/), 52.2% of viewers saw the season 2 premiere, “A Scandal in Belgravia,” online. Add the perfect cliffhanger; watching Benedict Cumberbatches’s Holmes throw himself off of a building only to reappear in the last moment of the season finale, and the Internet collectively had a meltdown. Given two years time to run wild, “Sherlock” fans have taken over a vast section of the internet; they converged on Tumblr and other forums to ponder just how he survived, and a cottage industry of “I Believe in Sherlock Holmes” artifacts sprung up on Etsy and Cafepress. BBC seemed to take advantage of the popularity, debuting the hashtag #SherlockLives in the Season 3 trailer. In two weeks it was used 163,000 times ([SecondSync](http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/sherlock-season-3-opens-92-2980258)).  The same site estimated that during the premiere on the first, the hashtag was used 304,636 times (and counting), and 9.2 million people tuned in (via [The Mirror](http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/sherlock-season-3-opens-92-2980258)).

 This should definitely be counted as a win for BBC, but a win in the shadow of a larger problem. “Sherlock” is considered one of the “U.K.’s top selling brand internationally ([Popwatch](http://www.popmatters.com/column/172425-the-way-we-watch-television-a-study-in-sherlock/)),” but the international community didn’t get to partake in Season 3 equally. There is nothing that anyone hates more than a spoiler; unless it’s feeling like you’re the last to know.  A big part of the appeal of “Sherlock” thus far has been to share your theories with similar-minded fans around the world. Lose out on the premiere, and you lose out on the conversation. To quote a participant in Ms. Porter’s survey, “Fandom waits for no one, and waiting months and months for an air date in the US is not an option.”

 A mini uproar gripped the web when it was revealed that attendees of an advanced showing of the season 3 premiere “The Empty Hearse” were leaking spoilers online, which led to numerous accounts being investigated and suspended on Tumblr.  When you’ve spent two years wedded to the idea that Sherlock survived by landing on a giant trampoline, you want to find out your wrong in the privacy of your own home, not through some loud mouth in a chat room.  In fact, fear of spoilers became as much of a story as the premiere itself, leading the BBCOne twitter handle to post it’s own “guide” to avoiding spoilers, before concluding, “To be honest, to avoid spoilers we’d recommend staying away from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Tumblr until you’ve seen the ep.”

 

A network actively encouraging people to avoid talking about its show on social media? That seems counterintuitive to everything we know about how social media has made it cool to watch TV in prime time again a lá “Scandal” and “Pretty Little Liars” and yes, “Sherlock.” But who really loses here? The network? There’s an argument there – it is estimated that the UK economy takes a £1.2 billion hit every year thanks to piracy (via DigitalSpy). But based on the numbers coming in, they haven’t felt the impact yet. No, the people who really lose are the fans. The fans in the U.K. who can’t freely discuss their reaction with the friends they’ve made abroad. The fans abroad who are faced with two pretty awful choices: (1) wait until it premieres where they live legally, avoid any type of social media till then (impossible) and watch as the issues they’re so ready to discuss become irrelevant or (2) try and find it online which, besides being not entirely legal, is littered with the booby traps of proxies, tor, viruses, and a whole host of other things that can take down your computer. A choice between awful and not great; which would you pick?

 Cumberbatch seems to be on the side of the fans. In a red carpet [interview](http://archiveofourown.org/works/) before Season 3 aired, he was “hopeful” that it would be aired simultaneously in the U.S. and U.K. Alas, it seems this was not to be this time around, but let’s hope BBC starts listening to its star if it wants to keep the series going. When fans turn on a show, things can get ugly pretty fast (I’m looking at you Dana and “Homeland”). Fans may lose patience and jump ship; if that happens, no amount of deduction will bring them back. 

 


End file.
